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A SEE M N 



PREACHED IN THE 



milx dfonjgr^jgatiflnal (^\mYf[% 



BOSTON, JAN. 22, 1865. 



BY REV. EDWARD E. HALE 



PRINTED FOR PRIVATE CIRCULATION. 




Of ^.J/j, 




Wash* 



BOSTON: 
ALFRED MUDGE & SON, PRINTERS, 34 SCHOOL STUEE'I'. 

1 8 Ci 5 . 



El's 4-0 



SERMON. 



And all things are of God, who liath reconciled us to himself by 
Jesus Christ, and hath given to us the ministry of reconciliation. 

Second Epistle to the Corinthians, Ch. v. : IS. 

I AM to illustrate this ministry of reconciliation by 
some study of the character of the great man whom 
God has just now called away. 

I do not hesitate, as you know, my friends, to bring 
to this place even my own personal sorrows. For we 
are here in a home, and we meet here as friend with 
friend. But it is not from personal grief that I am to 
speak to-day. I am to speak to you of the life of one 
whose loss you also mourn, — for whom this city, this 
state, and the whole land is mourning. We will not, 
in our ceremonies of homage for his memory, let that 
life pass by without finding some lesson in it, if we can. 

At the end of the threescore years and ten, before 
he had experienced that sorrow which belongs to the 
fourscore years, when fourscore years do come, he 
" ceased from his labors." His death was in the midst 
of every circumstance which poet or prophet ask for, 
to which of old they gave the name of Euthanasy, or, a 
happy death. It was sudden, but not unprepared for. 
All life has been making his preparation. He is in the 



4 

midst of honors as of success ; he has the conscious- 
ness, at the very last, of duty well done, and that the 
last effort of his life had been made in the relief of his 
suffering brethren. He is at home, surrounded by 
every tenderness, and there, very early in the morning, 
on the first day of the week, the spirit which has so 
fulfilled its part here shakes off the body which serves 
it no longer, and, in a moment, in the twinkling of an 
eye, it is changed. It is clothed upon with the spiritual 
body, and, in the new life, assumes the new senses and 
experiences of the new Home. 

My friends, as I looked that morning on that still face, 
and then as I passed from that house, so desolate, to the 
church where he took his first vows in the service of 
God and the world, — as I sat and stood in that pulpit, 
where he sjDoke his first word in the work to which his 
life w^as given, it was impossible to look upon the end 
of that life, and to look back upon its beginning, 
without seeing how its whole work had been one 
work, — without feeling the complete and steady con- 
sistency which had animated so many diverse undertak- 
ings ; without feeling that he had been true to this 
ministry of reconciliation ; to the support of which, 
even before boyhood was over, he pledged his life and 
took his ordination vows. 

In such words as I could command, I spoke then to 
that congregation of his faithfulness, his life through, 
to that ministry. I saw that I spoke to those who had 
heard his first words of public speech, who remembered 
the eloquence of his youth as it gave promise, so well 
fulfilled, of the riper eloquence of his manhood and age. 
And to them I said, that though he left the pulpit so 



5 

soon, he did not leave the mmistry of Christ. To that 
ministry he was true from his boyhood to the moment 
of his death, — in spheres of work so much hirger than 
any single pulpit can control he was true to it, — in this 
continent, and in the other he was true to it, — in private 
life and in public. And in every effort of a ministry, 
whose field, as it proved, became so wide and so 
diversified, it was, in his life, always a ministry of 
reconciliation. 

I. You will find this is true, my friends, in the 
work which he considered the central work of his 
life, — in the work which he did for the education 
of the people. I have not failed to observe in this 
last week, that men have been remembering him as a 
scholar, as a statesman, as an orator, while they praised 
him as a good citizen and as a patriot. But if you had 
asked him, the last day of his life, what was the 
essential or central wish and thought of his life, and 
what work he had most wished to succeed in, he would 
not have named statesmanship, oratory or learning. 
He would have named the education of the people. 
To this work he gave himself before he left college, 
when he undertook the duty of a district school 
teacher, — teaching pupils half of whom were older 
than himself. He held to it to the last hour of his 
life, when the only public office which he retamed 
was his charge as a trustee of the Public Library, 
an institution which in its very birth he cherished, 
and for which he worked and studied that it might 
become what it is, the fit completion of your system 
of education. He meant that it should fulfil and 



complete the true Catholic purpose of a Christian 
city, and give to the beggar the same opportunity 
for mental culture, — as has any prince of the land. 
From that beginning to this end, the idea of education 
has been central and essential, in his literary works, 
in his public addresses, — and you find it as well m 
his statesmanship and in his discharge of executive 
duties. In his orations he is never satisfied until 
he has instructed the audience in the facts involved, 
and this in no general way, but in a curious, almost 
recondite review of minute incidents connected with 
them. This habit sprang from his determination not 
to let those concourses of people separate till they 
had learned something, and had been imbued with 
the passion, or the determination to learn much nlore. 
So his service as governor of this state was distin- 
guished especially by the measures which were then 
inaugurated and set into successful operation for the 
development, and I may say, the re-establishment of 
our whole system of common schools. His interest 
in the University all men knew. It was an interest not 
in the least confined to an interest in any class of college- 
bred men, or to any special course of college studies, 
but an interest in which he determined to make the 
University promote and enlarge the common education 
of all. In this especial interest the very last hours 
of his life were spent, and his last literary eff"ort was 
devoted to the course of lectures on International Law 
Avhich in the next college term he expected to deliver 
at Cambridge. 

Now all this interest in education springs directly 
from his sense of the equal rights of all men,— from 



his determination that all men shall be closer united 
with each other ; that all chasms between class and 
class in society shall be so bridged over, that the lines 
of promotion shall be kept steadily open. That is to 
say, it is work done in the ministry of reconciliation : — 
that all men may be one, in the very wish and promise 
of the Saviour's prayer. " As thou, Father, art in me 
and I in thee, that in us they may also be one." There 
shall not be the chasm of ignorance, unavoidable and 
fore-ordained, to keep them longer sundered. 

II. You will find the same desire for reconciliation 
in his work as a public officer in political life. I said, 
just now, that his last studies were given to that great 
system of Public Law, which is itself the child of the 
Christian religion, and which, in the present state of 
Christendom, constitutes the only tie which unites 
nations together. To the diligent and conscientious 
use of this system, in securing the harmonious relation 
of states, some of the most distinguished work of his 
life was given, since, on entering Congress in his early 
life, he was appointed immediately a member of the 
House Committee on Foreign Affairs. When he 
returned to Congress as a Senator, he returned to a 
similar position in the Foreign Affairs Committee of 
that day. But I do not care to speak now of his part 
in mediating between nations, either in these positions, 
or when he was abroad, or when, as Secretary of State, 
he had the management of all our foreign relations. 
He asserted the ministry of reconciliation as constantly 
and as carefully in his work in our own contentions 
here at home. And here, too, I do not satisfy myself 



8 

with speaking of the candor and courtesy in which he 
always dealt with political 023ponents. He was sure of 
their respect, even when he forfeited that of his 
political friends. And I do not mean to speak of 
manner simply. I mean that he was Avilling to sacrifice 
anything- that was personal ; he was willing to sacrifice 
even his own honorable fame and the laurels which he 
had fairly won and fairly wore, if, by the sacrifice, he 
could more closely unite men or sections of the country 
which were in contention with each other. AVhen the 
history of his life shall be fairly written, it will appear 
that, in his efforts m this direction, which he made 
before this war came on, his every thought and wish 
and prayer were m the de^lxe to sustain and establish 
the equal rights of men, and to work out, not a tempo- 
rary truce, but a step towards lasting reconciliation. 
In the intimate personal relations which he had wdth 
leading men through all the south, and in his personal 
correspondence with them, he had means of influence 
such as no other man in this section of the country 
enjoyed. And I am eager to say here and now, what 
I suppose no man but himself had a right to say the 
day before he died, that when that correspondence is 
laid open, A\hen the influence which he tried to exert 
is faii'ly judged and understood, it will be acknowl- 
edged that this country had then no truer friend, and 
none who had a more consistent policy. It will be 
seen that in that policy he used his influence, I do not 
say for external union merely, but for the freedom 
of all men as well, with a view to that more thorough 
reconciliation which is based on the eternal rights 
of man. He saw, as we saw, and as we see to-day, 



9 

that in the union of these states is bound up all hope 
of the liberty of the slave. He saw what we did not 
see then, but what we do see now, that these states 
at that hour were on the very edge of civil war. And 
he saw what we did not see, but what we shall see, 
that there existed not only on our side of the line, 
but on the southern side of it as well, influences 
which could be relied upon for the reconciliation of 
the whole land on a basis which should respect and 
acknowledge the rights of all men. Seeing this, or 
supposing that he saw it, he was Avilling to sacrifice 
everything that a man could sacrifice in his ministry 
of reconciliation. In the discharge of that duty, under 
the necessities of the hour, it became necessary that 
he should be suspected, that he should be abused, that 
the laurels of old victories should be torn from him, 
unless by personal explanations he threw away the 
prospect of peace for the country and security for the 
rights of all her people, for which he was working. 
In that necessity he was true to his vow of ordination. 
He was as willing to give up men's admiration as this 
week he has shown himself willing to give up his life, 
so that by the one sacrifice or the other, men might 
be brought closer together. He could have regained 
that regard and confidence by a word, but he would 
not speak that word, while there was any hope that 
it was possible to combine, for the real union of this 
land, the efi"orts, and convictions of all its people. 

III. In this community there is no need that I 
should speak of the more simple personal kindnesses, 
by which, in his daily life, he carried out the ministry 
2 



10 

of reconciliation. Every one of you, almost, has your 
own special anecdote, by which to illustrate that 
singular gentleness or tenderness which welcomed 
all who came to him in any need. His money, his 
counsel, his wonderful memory, and, what was worth 
so much more to all of us, his time, were freely given 
every hour, to any one who could show that single 
claim. What stories that house, which seems so lonely 
now, has been hearing through all this week, of this 
tenderness and daily charity, kept hid so carefully 
before ! It is a boy left without a father, who comes 
from a distant home, to say here was his best friend ; 
it is some exile here, who needed his command of 
language, that she might fitly explain to him the 
poverty, he was to assuage. Every hour has been 
hearing a new story of want, to which he has min- 
istered, and of personal loss, which is not satisfied with 
the public expression of a public calamity. A thous- 
and persons have said before now, each that in Mr. 
Everett he has lost his best friend. There comes at 
the end of such a life, of which every day had some 
such record of kindness to others, this crowning act 
of Mondav — which we know now was so fatal to 
us, — in which he gave his life away for those who 
were in need. Through this winter, he had absolutely 
declined the proposals, which were made to him, 
literally every hour, to speak in public. He had 
secluded himself from all such engagements, that he 
might prepare his lectures on Public Law for the 
University. His friends understood that no call for 
his voice or public counsel must be made on him. 
But then came this cry for bread from Savannah, — 



11 

the first glimpse of the rainbow on the cloud of the 
last four years, — and that cry spoke to him, as it always 
spoke to him. To that appeal it was not for him 
to say, No ! You know how he answered it. True 
to the promise he made when he began his Chris- 
tian ministry, he closed that public ministry in 
the temple sacred to your liberties. He preached 
to you then and there a sermon, — and such a ser- 
mon ! — on the text which he announced himself : 
" If thine enemy hunger feed him, if he thirst give 
him drink." In the work of the Christian ministry 
his life began, in that work it has passed on, in that 
work it has come to an end. 

IV. But all that I have said would be nothing if he 
of whom it is said were not a courageous man. It is 
nothing for a man to belieVe in the brotherhood of 
man, — it is nothing for him to consecrate his life to the 
ministry of reconciliation ; it is nothing to feel tenderly 
and lovingly to all men around him, if he do not dare 
address himself to the work required in such sentiments, 
if he do not put his own shoulders to the wheel and his 
own hand to the plough. Not enough to " know what's 
right," unless, as the hymn says, one is willing to 
practise what he knows. I am eager to say, therefore, 
that Mr. Everett seems to me a man of coiu'age, — and 
I say this the more eagerly because I have heard this 
doubted, — and I do not believe that, by ill-informed 
observers, his character here was rightly conceived. I 
have heard men say he was timid. In any philo- 
sophical use of language, this word does not apply to 
him. Conscientious he was, in the finest fibre of his 



12 

life, — in its coarsest fibre as well. I do not believe the 
man lives ^^ho remembers word or work of his in 
which the trace of conscience could not be seen, work- 
ing with that amazing rapidity which marked all the 
operations of his mind or heart. But he was not what 
is called morbidly conscientious. In that sense he was 
not timid. It is true that he was shy. In his personal 
relations with man, woman, and child, there was always 
a trace of diffidence, — of real self-distrust when he met 
a stranger. One who knew him could see it in the 
movement of his hand, or in the glance of his eye. I 
do not think he ever overcame it. I believe he felt it 
as much the last day of his life as he did the day he 
entered Harvard College as a freshman. And people 
who did not know him well, judged him from this 
shyness. But it was a matter merely personal. It 
affected his relations with people he saw and spoke to. 
But it did not affect his relations to society, to the state, 
to history, and to the future. And I think you will find 
that people who knew him well, thought that in those 
relations his course was rather apt to be bold and 
unexpected than to be that of familiar following of 
precedents. I think they will say, that from natural 
temper, in such relations, he was a com-ageous man. 
His State papers are a fair illustration of this, — too 
few they are, because he was so little of his life in 
executive station. You will find in those papers that 
he was disposed, of temperament, to strike out new and 
bold plans of policy. When he was in England, for 
instance, he recommended to oiu- government a policy 
in the search and impressment questions so bold that 
they did not dare to follow it. I do not doubt the 



13 

government has often enough regretted that they did 
not. So, when he was in the Department of State, his 
answer to the proposals of the three nations in regard 
to Cuba announced a pohcy new to every man in 
America, in the form in which he stated it, but which, as 
he stated it, commanded the assent of every thoughtful 
man in America from that day to ours. And, certainly, 
the celebrated letter to Baron Hiilsemann, which he 
drew as Mr. Webster's confidential friend, — in our 
discussion with Austria as to the citizenship of German 
exiles, is a document as remarkable for the boldness 
of the policy it indicates as any document in our history. 
It is true that he was moderate in expression. From 
his boyhood he studied moderation. He says, in his 
memoirs, that he learned the methods of moderate 
expression from Benjamin Franklin. Because he was 
a minister of reconciliation, he never would overstate, 
as he never would understate, the position or the 
sentiment of an antagonist. The business of his life 
was to reconcile antagonisms. He could not be driven 
therefore into exaggerated language ; and, for this, 
he would be censured. I remember how the most 
courteous and gentle of my friends, now no longer 
living, told me why New England was dissatisfied with 
Mr. Everett's career as a senator. " New England did 
not send him there to argue, she did not send him 
there to persuade," said my friend ; " she sent him to 
swear at these southern leaders," and I remember 
that my gentle friend went so far as to specify the oath 
Mr. Everett should have used, the only time when 
I ever heard an oath sullying his conversation. I have 
no doubt that that was what New England wanted, 



u 

but it was just what New England could not have. 
If that was what she wanted she had sent the wrong 
man. He had not gone there to call down God's 
vengeance even on the worst of men. From the 
beginning of his life he had attempted this ministry 
of reconciliation, and whoever he dealt with, the weak- 
est or the wickedest, still he recognized them also 
as his Father's children, and worked as he prayed, that 
they also, with all men, might be one. 

He was conscientious. He was shy. He was mod- 
erate. But he was not timid. Shyness is not timidity. 
Moderation is not timidity. Conscience is not timidity. 
The oldest definition of courage makes it the mean 
between rashness and cowardice. And in all the essen- 
tial crises of his life, if I understand it, he showed 
himself a brave man. It is my duty to say this here 
and now, that young men may understand what sort 
of man it is who becomes a leader of society, a 
counsellor of states, an authority in letters. Men and 
associations and cabinets do not set themselves in order 
to listen to a coAvard's counsels. When you look upon 
the man Avho becomes the foremost citizen, you know, — 
because you find him in that position, — you may be 
certain that he is a brave man. 

Of such a life, the lesson, as God teaches it, is 
simple indeed. As we gather here, we are not remem- 
bering the cadences of his eloquence ; it is not his 
wonderful command of language, it is not his matchless 
memory, it is not the comprehensiveness of his view, 
which illustrated from so wide exjDerience each subject 
which came before him, it is none of these things 
that we care for, nay, that we remember. It is the 



15 

pledge of his life to God in Christ, it is the unselfish- 
ness, the tenderness, the love, the courage, and, at last, 
the self-sacrifice, by which he carries out that pledge at 
the end. You, young men, must not look into his 
history as if there were art of eloquence, or any intel- 
lectual methods of conviction, or any learning of schools 
or of books, by which you could rival that renown. 
Like everything which men prize, it is too great and 
too beautiful to be made an exclusive property, or 
locked up for one life, or two, or three. 

Oh ! my friends, how often this lesson is repeated to 
us, as we see the empty places of the strong men of this 
land, its counsellors and statesmen, but see their forms no 
more, that it is not their intellectual greatness ; it is not 
their triumphs, whether of statesmanship or learning, for 
which we prize them, but the truth, the honor, the 
love, which might be, which ought to be, alike in all. 
As we think on him whom we have lost, we know that 
we shall never hear again such words ; we know that 
no man will imitate those wonders either of oratory or 
of learning. But it is not that which we are grieving 
for. And that which we do grieve for, that which 
made him what he was and what he is, is no peculiar 
or separate treasure. This constancy, this tenderness, 
this unselfishness, it may be yours as it was his, as 
glorious in you as in him. The most ignorant beggar 
may lay claim to it, the child of least experience may 
begin with it, because we are all childi-en together of 
the God who asks for such graces, and who gives them. 

* 

It is to him w^e turn in our grief, asking him for the 
Faith, the Hoi:)e, and the Love which abide and con- 
tinue forever. 



€l)luurtr 6bcr£tt in tbc glinistrn of |Utontiliixtion. 



A SERMON 



PREACHED IN THE 



outit C|0ttJ9r4ptiottaI Ojhur^Ii, 



BOSTON, JAN. 22, 1865. 



BY REV. EDWARD E. HALE 



PRINTED FOR PRIVATE CIRCULATION. 



BOSTON: 

ALFKED MUDGE & SON, PRINTERS, 34 SCHOOL STREET. 

1865. 






• ■ ■"y». 



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